It’s Ramadan. This, to a non-Muslim foreigner living in downtown Istanbul, translates to two things: (a) watching people cue up in front of restaurants in evening time and (b) jolting awake – bewildered the first time, annoyed the second, and resigned every time thereafter – to the clangor of an impromptu drum session in the dead of the night. The cueing is for the iftar meal, an occasion where families whop down local delicacies – skewered meats, rice dishes and a bewildering array of tooth-numbing sweets – to cap off a day’s worth of fasting. The drumming, meanwhile, far from impromptu, is a tradition dating back to early Ottoman times. Thousands of “Ramadan drummers” descend on the city about an hour-and-a-half before dawn, sing, holler and beat their wares silly to remind the good people of Istanbul to rise and shine in time for the suhoor (pre-dawn) meal. Some of the good people of Istanbul have recently begun suggesting that in an age of alarm clocks a city of 15 million might be spared communal pandemonium at 3 A.M. for thirty consecutive nights. To little effect.
Overall, Ramadan celebrations in the modern heart of the city – Taksim, Beyoglu, Cihangir – are rather noticeable by their absence. During the day, cafes and lokantas teem with students and thirty-somethings sipping tea or enjoying a snack. In the evenings, plaintive Turk pop melodies, as well as their die-hard, hair-dyed devotees spill out onto the alleyways along Istiklal Caddesi. At night, meanwhile, a drummer doing his rounds is more likely to bump into a crowd of bar-hopping locals than to see someone awaken to set the suhoor table.
“You can’t even tell it’s Ramadan”, complained Ibrahim, an Egyptian student I ran into my first day in Istanbul. “These people”, he said, referring to the people I was staying with – a single mom and her on-and-off again boyfriend – “say they’re Muslim, but don’t know the first thing about their own religion”.
If they did, Ibrahim later argued, they – the girls of the house, that is – would think twice before "prancing around" the house in ripped jeans and a T-shirt.
Note: Ibrahim's contempt for Turkish women, genuine as it may have been, apparently did not stop him from spying on them in the shower.
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“I am 91 years old. I used to walk through the streets drumming to wake people for suhoor, but now I drum while on my motorcycle. In this way, I fulfill my task without getting tired”.
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Now, Ramadan or no Ramadan, I’m off to dinner. If there’s ever been a time to pray for making it through the night without getting hit by a motorcycle-mounted nonagenarian playing percussion, this is it.
